Train Your Brain– Cognitive Function Today

Improving your cognitive function can be a game changer. Ask yourself what the definition of cognitive performance is. Chances are you have heard of the term cognition and may have even used it in conversation. We seem to intuitively understand that cognition is the way we learn about the world around us, and it includes our perceptions, intuitions, and reasoning. Cognitive performance is our ability to gain and use this knowledge.

Daily Habits to Enhance Your Cognitive Function

You may have heard about brain fitness lately. Select games on smartphones and tablets promise to stave off mental decline and improve cognitive function. Most of these games have benefits, but you can’t maximize the growth of new neurons in your brain while sitting sedentary in a chair or playing a video game on a two-dimensional screen. To work out your full brain, you need to engage both hemispheres of your cerebellum and cerebrum. Learning new things in the three-dimensional real world is best for improving cognition. It’s best to stay away from sedentary time in front of screens and cyber-realities.

Seven Habits to Improve Your Cognitive Function

Be open to experiences

Staying mentally active and flexing your memory helps you learn.

Like any muscle, you have to use your brain or lose it.

Learning new and demanding skills while maintaining a social network is key to staying sharp as you age.

Learn a new instrument, memorize a poem, take a dance class.

When you are inside your comfort zone, you are outside of enhancement zone.

Physical Activity

Certain hormones increased during exercise help improve your memory function. A particular molecule that is released by your body during endurance exercise protects your brain against degeneration and improves cognition.

The brain-based skills used in cognitive performance are in every action you take, without you even realizing it. Sense perceptions (sight, hearing, smell, etc.), motor skills, decision-making, intuition, and language proficiency are all part of cognition. Your cognitive performance/function has less to do with actual knowledge; instead, it is about your ability to use that knowledge to carry out your goals. Having better cognitive performance can help you in many areas of your life, and the simple act of concentrating on improving it can help you more than you realize.

Dr. Ken Hopper and The Hopper Group welcome you to their practice. Having practiced Psychiatry throughout his twenty-five-year career, Dr. Hopper is Board Certified in Psychiatry and Neurology. Dr. Hopper has been named a Top10MD, an honor only 1-in-3 doctors succeed with this recognition in the United States. Contact Dr. Hopper’s office at 817-274-8800 to schedule your appointment today!